World War I in The Lord of the Rings
by A Rivendell Commoner
Summary: An overview of the influence of World War I on Tolkien's most famous work. Rated PG for a somewhat disturbing quote about the Battle of Sommes.
1. Default Chapter

A/N : I wrote this as my end-of-term research paper for Humanities class. It's the first essay of this kind I've written,   
so any constructive criticism would be great (no flames though, please)! Also, to my fellow nerds...er I mean scholars,  
this was originally written in MLA format. Unfortunately, Fanfiction.net isn't very MLA-friendly, so I had to change it.   
Also, it's late, so I'm going to wait until tomorrow to post the works cited. Sorry about that.  
  
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_**Tolkien's experiences during World War I influenced the themes and descriptions in _The Lord of the Rings._ It  
was not, however, an allegory for World War I. That distinction must be made for Tolkien hated allegory and   
definitely did not consider his works as such. J.R.R. Tolkien served as a second lieutenant with the 11th   
Lancashire Fusiliers during World War I (Kessler). World War I had an extreme psychological impact on   
Tolkien (Rogers 21). _The Lord of the Rings_ expresses faith in a Higher Power alongside disillusionment and   
pessimism (Shippey 156).  
  
Tolkien expressly denied that World War II and the Cold War influenced his writings. However, he did not say  
the same for World War I (Kessler). Tolkien once said, An author cannot of course remain wholly unaffected   
by his experience (Shippey 164), and he also said his real taste for fairy stories was awakened by philology   
on the threshold of manhood, and quickened to full life by war. Tolkien began to write The Silmarillion while   
still in the trenches, and many parts of _The Lord of the Rings_ contain direct references to this early work   
(Rogers).  
  
Hobbits, the most important race in _The Lord of the Rings_, have their origins in pre-World War I English   
peasants (Stimpson). Like the young soldiers, Frodo, Sam, Merry, and Pippin are thrust out of their idealized,   
comfortable world into a terrifying experience which would rob them of their innocence. Tolkien said, The   
Hobbits are just rustic English people, made small in size because it reflects the generally small reach of their  
imagination (Rogers).  
  
His descriptions of Mordor and its surrounds closely resemble contemporary descriptions of the Battle of   
Sommes, in which he took part (Kessler). While Tolkien said World War I did not influence the plot, he   
admitted that it definitely had an effect on the landscape. The desert approaching Mordor closely resembles   
the area between enemy trenches known as the no man's land, with which Tolkien would have been very   
familiar (Kessler). The name Tolkien gave Mordor's surrounds, (III 302), adds to the evidence   
of World War I influence on this important aspect of _The Lord of the Rings_. Most obvious are the parallels   
between the Passages of the Dead Marshes and other authors' descriptions of the Battle of Sommes. Frodo   
cries, There are dead things, dead faces in the water ... dead faces. This is eerily similar to Siegfried   
Sassoon's account in _Memoirs of an Infantry Office_r, where he states, Floating on the surface of the flooded   
trench ... the mask of a human face ... detached ... from the skull. Several other authors, such as Masefield   
and Plowman, give similar accounts (Kessler). Bodies would lie unburied for years in the trenches and all   
rotted the same, regardless of side. This may have also contributed to the Dead Marshes, in which the bodies   
of Elves and Men, as well as those of Orcs, are and After death, they are all ... the same   
(Shippey 217).  
  
The Nazgûl, who at first seem more like the Grim Reaper than anything, become suggestive of incoming   
rounds once they assume their winged mounts. Tolkien wrote, Out of the black sky there came dropping like   
a bolt a winged shape, rending the clouds with a ghastly shriek. The Nazgûl have an effect on the men   
similar to that of the shocking new weapons used in World War I. Its defenders throw themselves to the   
ground, or stand, letting their weapons fall from nerveless hands, wrote Tolkien (Kessler).   
  
Other, less noticeable, examples of the war's influence occur in details throughout the novel. On the far side   
of the Noman-lands, in the depths of Mordor, Sauron, the Enemy, musters his forces at night instead of during   
the day, an action almost unheard of in older mythologies. In _The Lord of the Rings_, Tolkien writes, Neither   
man nor orc moved along its grey stretches for the Dark Lord had almost completed the movement of his   
forces, and even in the fastness of his own realm he sough the secrecy of night. He has an Orc snarl to his   
comrade, Don't you know we're at war? A similar admonition (Don't you know there's a war on?) was   
common during Tolkien's time. A demonizing of technology took place during Tolkien's lifetime, through the   
creation and use of weapons such as tanks and machine guns. His writings reflect his dislike of such   
machines. In _The Lord of the Rings_, Tolkien writes of the Goblins, a terrible demon-like species, wheels and   
engines and explosions always delighted them. The fall of Sauron marks the beginning of the novel's   
resolution, and the descriptions of his death are more like the bursts of a powerful shell than the fall of evil   
beings in the myths Tolkien drew from (Kessler).  
  
J.R.R. Tolkien trained in signaling before being sent to the Somme from July 1916 to October of the same   
year (Rogers 20, Shippey x). The battlefield was horrifically different from signaling school and from what the   
commanding officers expected. There Tolkien became painfully familiar with some of the evils of the 20th century,   
such as industrialized war, carpet bombing, use of chemical weapons, and the massacre of noncombatants   
(Shippey 158).  
  
Battle also caused him to ponder the concept of heroism and courage. For him, danger had no allure because if   
one does not overcome the danger, it will continue to injure, if not physically, then spiritually or socially (Rogers   
46). Defeatism in its original sense, war-weariness combined with the feeling that the sacrifices already made   
should be abandoned for an inconclusive peace, angered Tolkien. He believed victory or defeat have nothing to   
do with right and wrong, (Shippey 150) a concept that many would do well to remember.  
  
Tolkien combined the characteristics of modern war heroes with ancient ones. One of the biggest differences   
between the two is camaraderie. Ancient heroes never receive praise for and rarely think about aiding their friends   
in battle. Tolkien's heroes, however, think of their friends first and their own renown second, like the soldiers   
alongside whom Tolkien fought (Shippey 41). In the trenches, Tolkien saw perseverance, both grim and   
humorous, among the lower ranks (Rogers 20). All this carried over into _The Lord of the Rings _ as the theme of   
camaraderie and its importance. Tolkien said of Samwise Gamgee, the faithful servant of the main character, My   
Sam Gamgee' is indeed a reflexion of the English soldier, of the privates and batmen I knew in the 1914 war, and   
recognized as so far superior to myself (Kessler). In_ The Two Towers,_ the Fellowship is reunited at the ruin of   
Isengard, where they smoke, eat, and trade news. According to C.S. Lewis, a close friend of Tolkien and a fellow   
veteran, this little island of relaxation and plenty in the devastated landscape was true to the World War I   
experience (Rogers 110). Gimli pushes aside his terror and continues on the Paths of the Dead for the sake of his   
friends, especially Aragorn. In the chapter The Last Debate Gimli says, For upon that road I was put to shame ...   
and I was held to the road only by the will of Aragorn, to which his companion Legolas replies, And by the love of   
him also ... for all those who come to know him come to love him after their own fashion (Tolkien II 184).  
  
Tolkien said that by 1918, all but one of my closest friends were dead (Rogers chronology). This leads to the   
sense of the passing of good times and the loss of good people (Rogers 21). This sense is personified by the   
departure of the Elves to Valinor and makes the entire novel rather melancholy and sad. Partly because of the loss   
of his friends, death is a major theme in _The Lord of the Rings,_ but not always in the way one suspects. The Elves,   
unless slain by steel or grief, escape from death through their immortality. However, their immortality causes them   
much sorrow, and the Elves envy the mortality of the Men, seeing it as a gift while Men see it as a curse.   
Throughout _The Lord of the Rings,_ as well as many of his other works, Tolkien expresses an unusual literary   
concept - escape t_o _ death. Several characters choose mortality over unceasing life in Valinor. Arwen Undómiel is   
the most famous example.  
  
In _The Lord of the Rings,_ the characters refer to the War of the Ring as the war to end all wars. This same phrase   
was used to describe World War I. Most of the characters feel that once Sauron has been defeated, evil has been   
destroyed forever, too. However, Elrond remembers that long ago the Elves had thought the exact same thing, and   
it was not so. The inhabitants of Middle Earth, just like the inhabitants of Earth, learn that evil cannot be wiped out   
forever (Shippey 165).  
  
Though not often recognized, _The Lord of the Rings _expresses the theme of love despite conflict. In 1916 Tolkien  
caught trench fever and was sent away from the Sommes. He spent much of his convalescence with his wife and   
son, and the sight of his wife dancing with his son in a glade during this time inspired the Lay of Lúthien (Rogers   
20). The poem of Beren and Lúthien influenced the similar story of Aragorn and Arwen, the best known couple in   
_The Lord of the Rings._ Also, in_ The Return of the King,_ Faramir and Éowyn fall in love while in the Houses of   
Healing, the Middle Earth equivalent of a battlefield hospital.  
  
World War I influenced the themes and descriptions in Tolkien's T_he Lord of the Rings._ J.R.R. Tolkien served in the  
first World War, and fought in the Battle of Sommes. The horror of the Sommes, combined with the deaths of his   
closest friends, had a deep impact on Tolkien, and_ The Lord of the Rings _ reflects this impact.


	2. Works Cited

A/N: Sorry yall, saving it as a text-only document (only option on this computer) removes all formatting.  
  
**Works Cited**  
  
*Beagle, Peter S. Foreward. The Lord of the Rings, by J.R.R. Tolkien. New York: Ballantine Books, 1973.  
  
*Beyond the Movie: The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. National Geographic, 2002  
  
*Bloom, Harold, ed. Modern Critical Views: J.R.R. Tolkien. Philadelphia: Chelsea House Productions, 2000.  
  
*Kessler, Brian. "Tolkien and the Wars." The Tolkien Archives. 23 April 2003 http://www.tolkien-archives.com/library/essays/tolkwars.inc  
  
*Rogers, Deborah Webster, and Ivor A. Rogers. J.R.R. Tolkien. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1980.  
  
*Rogers, Graham. "JRR Tolkien," Tolkien in Oxford. 23 April 2003. http://www.jrrtolkien.org.uk/J.%2OR.%2OR.%2OTolkien.htm  
  
*Stimpson, Catharine R. "Tolkien, John Ronald Reuel." Encyclopedia Americana. ? ed. 2001  
  
*Shippey, Tom. J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century. New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2001.  
  
*Tolkien, J.R.R. The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Rings. New York: Ballantine Books, 1954.  
  
---. The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. New York: Ballanatine Books, 1954.  
  
---. The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King. New York: Ballantine Books, 1954. 


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